Special IMAHelps thank you to Jeff Crider for putting this slide show together.

1. An Overview of IMAHelps
Our volunteers bring healthcare and
hope to people who often have neither

2. What is IMAHelps?
• IMAHelps is a non-profit organization that provides
basic health and hygiene education, medical
diagnoses, prescriptions and life-changing surgeries
to some of the poorest people of Central and South
America.
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3. What is IMAHelps?
• Formerly known as
International Medical Alliance,
the group was founded by Ines
Allen, a former Cathedral City
Rotarian, in 2000.
• Here she is meeting with
Robert Downes, the Charge
D’Affairs of the US Embassy in
Nicaragua during a visit to see
IMAHelps volunteers in Esteli,
Nicaragua last year.
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4. What is IMAHelps?
• In the past 12 years, IMAHelps has organized 13
medical missions and brought health education, life-
changing surgeries, medical examinations, dental care
and other free healthcare services to more than
100,000 impoverished people in Ecuador, Nicaragua
and Tibet.
• The group is now organizing a series of medical
missions to Peru beginning next summer.
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5. IMAHelps volunteers treat thousands of patients on
every medical mission.
• We know our healthcare services are needed
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6. IMAHelps Volunteers Often Change Lives
• Consider these examples!
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7. Santos de Cruz Meza
• For 67 years, Santos de Cruz Meza was the neighborhood
pariah. Born with a cleft lip in Nicaragua, her deformity worsened
with age, twisting her nose while the top of her mouth produced a
frightening jumble of rotting, unusable teeth.
“She wouldn’t dare go outside without a towel wrapped around her
face,” said Guadalupe Gonzalez Cruz, her 22-year-old daughter.
“Everyone made fun of her.”

8. Santos de Cruz Meza
• Moved by her suffering, IMAHelps volunteers removed Cruz’s
teeth and shaved her maxilla so that she could be fitted with
dentures. Then they sewed her cleft lip shut, closing the fissure
that had subjected her to nearly seven decades of torment and
ridicule.
“The first thing I’m going to do when I
get home,” Santos de Cruz Meza said
after surgery, “is take a walk down the
street, just like everybody else.”

9. Santos de Cruz Meza
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10. Jose Jesus Rodriguez
• Jose Jesus Rodriguez is an 18-year-old coffee plantation worker who
was born with an extra thumb on each hand, which IMAHelps surgeons
removed.
• In addition to being unsightly, Rodriguez said he could not move his
extra thumbs and that they made it difficult for him to grasp various tools.
He said the surgery would improve his job security in Nicaragua by
helping to ensure that he could grasp tools and other farm implements
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like his fellow coffee plantation employees.

11. Catalino Vallecito Torres
• In Jinotega, Nicaragua, IMAHelps volunteers met 64-
year-old Catalino Vallecito Torres, a coffee plantation
worker who was electrocuted when he fell on a power
line while trimming a tree.
• His right leg was amputated just below his knee as a
result of the electrocution, but the cut wasn’t made
properly, so IMAHelps surgeons recut his leg and
wrapped it so that it would heal properly.
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12. Catalino Vallecito Torres
• Robert Openshaw, an IMAHelps prosthetist from San
Bernardino, Calif. also fitted Torres with a prosthetic
leg so that he could walk again, retain some level of
independence and eventually get back to work.
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13. Hope For Those Without Hope
• In some cases, there are no
medical solutions. Doraldina
Quevedo suffers from
rheumatoid arthritis and lost
the ability to walk 15 years
ago. Her husband and three
children have literally carried
her from place to place
because they couldn’t afford
a wheelchair. After hearing
Doraldina’s story, IMAHelps
volunteers took up a
collection amongst
themselves and bought her a
wheelchair.

14. Hope For Those Without Hope
• Our patients in Jinotega included this 10-year-old boy
with polio. IMAHelps volunteers couldn’t provide him
with a medical solution. But we did give him his first
set of wheels.
• He was SO PROUD!
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15. Hope For Those Without Hope
• IMAHelps volunteers raised
enough money amongst
themselves to buy several
wheelchairs, walkers and
canes.
• They donated one of the
wheelchairs to “Celestina,”
a 95-year-old woman whose
family literally abandoned
her at a hospital in
Nicaragua.
• IMAHelps Founder Ines
Allen intervened on
Celestina’s behalf and
placed her in a local nursing
home run by volunteers.

16. We Make Your Donations Count
• Because our medical missions include volunteers from virtually every
medical specialty, IMAHelps delivers an extremely high return on
investment (ROI) of more than $100 for every dollar we receive in
donations:
-- In 2009, IMA volunteers raised $79,283 and provided $10,706,647
worth of medical care to 4,794 patients in Ibarra, Ecuador. That’s an
ROI of $135 for every donated dollar.
-- In 2010, IMA volunteers raised $86,980 and delivered $9,419,400
worth of medical care to 8,446 patients in Somoto, Nicaragua. That’s
an ROI of $108 for every donated dollar.
-- In 2011, IMA volunteers raised $60,000 and delivered $11,234,600
worth of medical care to 12,277 patients in Esteli, Nicaragua. That’s
an ROI of $187 for every donated dollar.
-- In 2012, IMAHelps volunteers raised $85,000 and delivered $13.4
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million worth of medical care to 13,733 patients in Jinotega, 16
Nicaragua. That’s an ROI of $158 for every donated dollar.

17. What can you do?
• Please support our efforts and get
involved as we work to develop support
for IMAHelps!
• www.IMAHelps.org
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